Fourth Generation Inclusive

Horrid Murder. – The wife of Jonathan Dalton of Montfort’s Cove, in this County, was committed to jail, in this town, on Wednesday last, charged with shooting her husband, while asleep, on the morning of the previous day.  The evidence against her, we are told, is entirely circumstantial, as no person is known to have been in the house when the deed was perpetrated except herself and husband.  She, however, states that a mulatto man who had married her sister, came to the house during the night, and that he endeavoured to persuade her to leave her husband and go home with him; that she went out of the house early in the morning and left them both within, when she soon heard the discharge of a gun, and without entering the house fled to the neighbors for aid – saying that a mulatto man had killed her husband.  Her tale is by no means consistent. She had been married to him but three or four months, and we are told, that they had not lived together for a considerable portion of the time, and that she had positively declared that she never would live with him. We must forbear to state the circumstance relative to this transaction which have come to us, as they might serve to prejudice her trial, which will probably take place in October next.  Dalton, we are informed, was dead before any of his neighbors arrived.  Suspicion falls on another person as having been an accessory.

Miners’ and Farmers’ Journal, Charlotte, 31 July 1832.